Pfizer-funded workshop raises questions of ethics
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Health journalism, Pharmaceuticals
Christopher Weaver, in a piece from Kaiser Health News and NPR, writes about a Pfizer-funded seminar for journalists. To attend the annual seminar about cancer, hosted by the National Press Foundation, 15 journalists get an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C.
Health care journalists, including HealthNewsReview.org’s Gary Schwitzer and AHCJ president Charles Ornstein, say reporters need to be careful and avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.
Foundation president Bob Myers says the pharmaceutical company does not have input on the meeting and an attendee of last year’s meeting, AHCJ member Joy Robertson, says she doesn’t remember Pfizer ever being mentioned at the event.
Commenters on the KHN/NPR include AHCJ members Ornstein; Andrew Holtz, M.P.H. (also a board member); Elaine Schattner, M.D.; and Schwitzer. Schattner, a licensed, non-practicing physician and medical educator, says “This is precisely how Pfizer and other companies try to influence physicians who, in their sometimes-arrogance, tend to think they’re “above” subtle persuasion. Are journalists any better?”
Journalist Merrill Goozner also has written about the seminar and says that that Pfizer has dictated the overall agenda:
Pfizer didn’t make an unrestricted grant to a journalism training organization. The money is being spent to train journalists in how to cover cancer.
Goozner points out, as does Holtz in his comment on the NPR/KHN piece, that “journalism spends less on training than almost any other profession” and that journalists have few opportunities to get out of the newsroom for professional education.
Covering Health wrote about this seminar and this issue last year. It’s worth noting, as we did then, that the Association of Health Care Journalists and the Center for Excellence in Health Care Journalism seek to minimize the possibility and appearance of inappropriate influence from outside parties. Pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and medical device makers are examples of organizations with with AHCJ will not partner. Read AHCJ’s complete fundraising policies.
AHCJ’s Statement of Principles, which identifies challenges that health care reporters face and suggests how to meet those challenges, addresses the topic:
- Refuse gifts, favors, and special treatment. Refuse meals from drug companies and device manufacturers and refuse to accept unsolicited product samples sent in the mail.
- Weigh the potential benefits involved in accepting fees, honoraria, free travel, paid expenses from organizers of conferences or events against the desire to preserve our credibility with the audience and the need to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.
- Also weigh the potential benefits of accepting awards from organizations sponsored by an entity with a vested interest in health care against our need for credibility.
- Weigh the potential conflict in accepting support from public, private, or foundation sources.
Butcher, Rosenthal win APEX Awards
Congratulations to AHCJ members Lola Butcher and Eric Rosenthal, who won APEX Awards for Publication Excellence for work that appeared in Oncology Times.
Butcher won in the category of “How-to Series Writing,” for her articles about Twitter and cancer care:
- “How Twitter Is Transforming the Cancer Care Community“
- “Oncologists Using Twitter to Advance Cancer Knowledge.”
Rosenthal was reconized in the News Series category for his “Economy Watch” series:
- As the Economy Turns, Cancer Centers Employ Watchful Waiting
- American Cancer Society Eliminates Exhibitions at Major Oncology Meetings
- Some of This Season’s Oncology Society Meetings May be Scaled Back
- Recessional Updates Reported from AACR’s Annual Meeting
More information about the awards and a complete list of winners is online (PDF).
Send us your latest news
Got a new job? Earned a promotion? Won an award or fellowship? Just published a book? AHCJ members are encouraged to share your news by sending it to info@healthjournalism.org. Member news items are posted on Covering Health and in HealthBeat, AHCJ’s newsletter.
Sapien chronicles formaldehyde battle
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Government, Health policy, Hot Health Headline
At ProPublica, Joaquin Sapien tells the story of how Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter successfully obstructed the FDA’s attempts to get formaldehyde, which has been linked to leukemia, as a known carcinogen. Right now, it’s still listed as “probable.” The industry’s favorite tool, and the one Vitter employed for them in this case, was to force the EPA into conducting yet another costly, time-consuming study.
The EPA’s chemical risk assessments are crucial to protecting the public’s health because they are the government’s most comprehensive analysis of the dangers the chemicals present and are used as the scientific foundation for state and federal regulations. But it usually takes years or even decades to get an assessment done, or to revise one that is outdated. Often the industry spends millions on lobbying and on scientific studies that counter the government’s conclusions.
Sapien’s history of Sen. Vitter’s stonewalling, as well as his ties to the formadehyde industry, are an excellent example of just how difficult it has been for the EPA to upgrade key risk assessments.
Sapien’s story is well worth reading, but those looking for an overview can also refer to his excellent timeline, that goes from the EPA’s first health assessment in 1989 to Vitter’s demand that an assessment of the chemical be reviewed by the National Academy and his subsequent block of an EPA nomination late last year.
Researchers analyze media’s cancer reporting
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
University of Pennsylvania researchers reviewed 436 cancer-related newspaper and magazine stories (about 1/5 of the total) published between 2005 and 2007 and found that media tend to overhype aggressive treatments and avoid failures, errors, end of life care and death. Here’s the abstract in Archives of Internal Medicine.
In the press release, the study’s highlights are summarized thus:
- Although 32 percent of the articles focused on survival, only 8 percent covered death and dying; this despite the fact that half of all cancer patients will die of their illness.
- While most stories discussed aggressive cancer treatments, almost none (2 percent) discussed end-of-life, palliative or hospice care.
- 13 percent reported that aggressive cancer treatments can fail, and just 30 percent reported that aggressive treatments can result in adverse effects.
The authors note that the media under-reports palliative and hospice care, as well as outcomes data and other issues surrounding death and dying.
The study notes that unrealistic optimism is presented in most stories about cancer treatment, when in reality half of all cancer patients do not survive, according to statistics from the American Cancer Society.
“The nation’s leading media institutions have set a low bar for routine coverage of the nation’s long-running war on cancer. Hype is the norm,” wrote medical author Merrill Goozner, MS, in a commentary accompanying the article. “The relationship between journalism and medical researchers has been called a complicit collaboration in which both benefit from sensationalized stories. Recent media cutbacks and the evolution of a hyper speed news cycle only made things worse.”
“The tendency of the news to report on aggressive cancer treatments and survival, but not on alternatives, is … noteworthy given that unrealistic information may mislead the public about the trade-offs between attempts at heroic cures and hospice care,” the authors of the study wrote.
Roche linked to doctor praising drug in the media
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Health journalism
Crikey.com, a news Web site based in Melbourne, Australia, calls our attention to some recent reporting about Mabthera, a drug used to treat non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
Nick Miller, health editor of The Age, recently reported that Mabthera, manufactured by Roche, “has been found to nearly double the number of [leukemia] patients who go into remission.”
In that article, Miller quoted a doctor as saying, “This is the largest single advance in the treatment of this disease in the last 30 years.”
Miller was rebuked by oncologist Dr. Ian Haines, who wrote a letter to the newspaper. Haines points out that the article was “an exaggeration of the benefits of the treatment with no presentation of the downsides … which is that it’s incredibly expensive, it’s not without risk,” according to Flint Duxfield, a student at the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism.
Duxfield goes on to explain how events unfolded and reveals that the promotion of Mabthera is being driven by Roche, which provides financial support to Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, which employs the doctor who originally touted the drug in Miller’s article.
In fact, sections of the press release issued by the cancer center and the press release from Roche’s public relations company are identical and contain the same comments from the doctor quoted by Miller.
Duxfield also reports that warnings that have been issued for the use of Mabthera that have gone unreported in the print media.
The story says “the engagement of third parties in providing a link between a drug company and the media is all too common in health journalism.”
Veteran health reporter Ray Moynihan agrees: “It happens enormously often because third party endorsements are PR 101 for drug companies.”
Duxfield also points to other examples of these so-called “third=party endorsements” and how they have been reported in the media.
KQED profiles those who live with disease, injury
This month’s edition of Health Dialogues, part of KQED’s California Report, focuses on living with disease. In the report, KQED reporters talk to folks living with chronic disease, the effects of traumatic injury and other conditions that can have lasting effects on a person’s quality of life.
To provide insight into the life and routine of someone coping with chronic disease, reporters profile a music programmer ‘coping’ with diabetes, an activist who stumbled upon a forgotten childhood diagnosis of hepatitis B and a cellist with multiple sclerosis. They also talk to a couple dealing with cancer and two sisters on opposite ends of an organ donation chain.
In addition to cancer and disease, KQED reporters also explore how the lasting effects of traumatic injury can shape your life. Pieces include a KPBS reporter talking about his own traumatic brain injury and the story of a surfing-based physical therapy program for veterans.
Journal launches site for journalists covering studies
In an editorial in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, “Promoting Healthy Skepticism in the News: Helping Journalists Get It Right,” Steven Woloshin, Lisa M. Schwartz and Barnett S. Kramer analyze some recent media coverage of journal articles and research findings and conclude that “When it comes to exaggeration of health hazards and medical breakthroughs, there is plenty of blame to go around.”
It would be easy to pin all the blame for exaggeration on journalists. After all, they have to grab their reader’s (or listener’s) attention. Screaming headlines and breathless reporting come in handy. And many health journalists lack the medical or statistical training needed to appraise research critically. Curiously, many fail to approach medical research with the same skepticism they routinely apply to political reporting. Nonetheless, blaming journalists for all exaggeration would be unfair. Many health journalists (and their editors) do a great job.
The writers also acknowledge that researchers’ passion can play a part, as well as the desire to get good media attention. They also point to journals’ failure to include or highlight some important elements that would help journalists accurately report on study findings.
In a move to help improve coverage of research, the JNCI has launched “a Web site for science and health journalists to help them ‘get it right.’” The first offering is “Reporting on Cancer Research,” a set of tip sheets designed to help reporters better understand oncology research and its results. It was developed for the writers’ book, Know Your Chances: Understanding Health Statistics, and adapted for journalists attending the annual Medicine in the Media workshop. Each PDF highlights a different aspect of interpreting cancer research (risk numbers, statistics, findings and outcomes, and cautions), and all four are succinct and easy to use, even on deadline.
Can Americans learn that less may be better?
AHCJ member Laura Newman, the About.com guide to urology, writes about whether consumers will embrace the message that “‘less is more,’ when science confirms it.” In this case, Newman focuses on the American Urological Association’s guideline for kidney cancer treatment, released in April, that called for saving the kidney whenever possible.
Taken in the context of the conflicts in the past few weeks over recommendations for less PSA screening, less breast cancer screening, and less cervical cancer screening, I commend the AUA and other physician organizations for reviewing the balance of benefits and harms in treating early-stage kidney cancer more aggressively.
Is community research oversight flawed?
Filed under: Government, Hospitals, Hot Health Headline
America’s 400-plus designated Community Research Sites receive much less attention than the massive academic research hospitals, but conduct the bulk of the nation’s cancer research.
The New York Times’ Duff Wilson turns the spotlight on these sites, considering problems an HHS investigation uncovered at an institution in Urbana, Ill., that may show that oversight is lacking and “the community centers may not always be adhering to the rigorous protocols of research medicine that the National Cancer Institute expects them to follow.”
If that’s true, Wilson writes, it will draw the very validity of many research conclusions into question. If you’re curious about the specific nature of the research site’s violations rather than the larger systemic implications, check out the second page of Wilson’s story.
Hockey, theater tickets for prostate screenings
Gary Schwitzer, professor at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism & Mass Communication and publisher of HealthNewsReview.org, writes about the Roswell Park Cancer Institute’s promotion of its “Prostate Club for Men,” complete with prizes for men who discuss screening.
As Schwitzer points out, there is no mention of the potential harms of prostate cancer treatment or the fact that some prostate cancers grow so slowly that they never produce symptoms or become life threatening. Instead, the club says the screening is “quick and simple, and it could save your life.”
The club’s Web site even carries a message from a local anchorman urging men to be screened for prostate cancer, again, with nothing about potential harms.
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Spend a week at the CDC studying public health, meeting sources. Apply for the AHCJ-CDC Health Journalism Fellowships today!
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